100 years of neon - in pictures

In 1911 neon, a new form of lighting, was born. Before long its raffish charm had lit up the streets of urban America and cities worldwide and inspired film-makers and artists from Alfred Hitchcock to Tracey Emin

Cars pass hotels on Ocean Drive, Miami at dusk. When Neon was first used in America in 1923, it marked the site of a Packard car dealership in automobile addicted Los Angeles. It is now ubiquitous in every American city

Neon sign enthusiast Kirsten Hively has been documenting New York's signs on her blog Project Neon since last year. One of her finds is The Heartbreak Bar "in bleeding red neon; a shadowy den in which you can doctor your misery with a drink"

Russ & Daughters, a family catering in New York: "Either side of the salmon-pink subheading APPETIZERS two aquamarine neon fish frolic, diving towards the door as if anxious to be killed, sold and eaten"

Neon signs in Times Square, New York in 1955. They seem tame compared with today's LED panels on the sides of the square's skyscrapers which have transformed it into "an alfresco, interactive television studio"

In Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) James Stewart and Kim Novak "embrace in a luminous fog breathed out by the neon sign clamped to the window; green here is the colour of decay, the sickly exhalation from a tomb"